1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to network-based data transfers, and more particularly, to Internet-based content delivery and monetization over the open Web environment as well as closed proprietary systems to expand opportunities for custodial publishers to receive revenue associated with downloadable digital content.
2. Related Art
Traditionally, advertisements have been the means by which publishers monetized digital assets. These advertisements are embedded on web pages, and presented in visual proximity to various written and/or visual materials such as articles, videos, and the like. The presentation of advertisements has evolved over time, with the earliest examples being standard HTML compatible code embedded within page content as text or images. More recently, more engaging presentations are utilized, such as pop-up/pop-under advertisements, also referred to as superstitials, interstitials in which the user is redirected to an intermediary webpage between two other webpages and an advertisement is presented for a predefined time, until user action is received in order to transition to the content, and dynamic advertisements that expand across a page when a user interacts with an embedded webpage advertisement. Web pages, however, represent merely a fraction of the digital assets available from publishers today, and conventional advertisements are a small portion of the monetized content now available from advertisers. Monetized content may refer to advertisements (including video), affiliate merchant products, monetized search widgets, advertorial blurbs, promoted social media content such as “Pins, Tweets, and Posts,” art, music, and photography, etc.
Considering that the systems that handle publisher content on the Internet, There are two types of content systems on the Internet in very simplified terms: closed and open. A closed system is one in which a group of web pages and/or files are locked in a proprietary system or framework and are therefore inaccessible to the public without payment and/or a password. An example of such a closed system is a pay-per-download framework. The file is inaccessible to the general public and only becomes accessible once payment is made, a custom URL accessed, and/or a password is provided by the user to retrieve the file. Certain closed systems, such as YouTube, have limited attributes of an open system, where the files (in this case videos) are accessible to the public for viewing, but the files themselves are inaccessible to the public for download. An open system, on the other hand, represents the remainder and the majority of the Internet, where web pages and/or files may be easily linked to by websites around the world, and readily accessed by the public at large without any restrictions. Unlike closed systems, no payment or passwords are required to access web pages or files that reside within the open web environment.
By some estimates, there are billions of downloadable files posted on the Internet that are freely available. These include PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, as well as others in native editable document formats such as .doc/.docx files for word processing documents editable in, for example, Microsoft Word, .ppt files for presentation documents editable in, for example, Microsoft Powerpoint, .xls files for spreadsheet documents editable in, for example, Microsoft Excel, .ai files for raster graphics editable in Adobe Illustrator, and so forth. Other data such as fonts (.ttf), mobile applications (.app), plugins, executable applications (.exe), etc. are additional examples of downloadable files that are available on the Internet. One search engine returned 1.19 billion “activity PDF” files, alone [indexed in 0.22 seconds, May 2014], representing hundreds of billions, or possibly trillions of download instances each year. Thus, there is a substantial volume of under-monetized assets. With the advent of tablets, smart phones, wearable computing devices, and more intelligent gaming systems, the number of daily downloaded files has increased exponentially. According to Apple, over five million e-books were downloaded during the first 65 days that the Apple iBook store was open, many of which were downloaded for free, and 2.5 million application installations accounted for and 10 billion downloads in the first six months of 2013. Although network bandwidth and data transfer rates are increasing, the demand for such improved network capacity has commensurately increased. Even with a 768 Kbps DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connection, which is an average broadband home connection in the United States, an average music file of about 7 megabytes takes about one minute and 16.46 seconds to download.
New forms of monetizing publishing assets are being developed, but most approach the problem through the aforementioned closed systems. One of the challenges of an open web environment is the determination of custodianship of a particular file, so that only those with a legitimate monetization right can do so. Free linking is a fundamental aspect of the form and function of the open architecture of the Internet, and this essential function is also one of its greatest strengths. That a single file can have multiple incoming links, oftentimes in the thousands or tens of thousands, can also be the most significant weakness with respect to monetizing digital files. Copyright laws can protect, to a certain extent, the creator/author's ability to exercise control over their dissemination (and hence profit) from their works. In an open web environment, any third party can link directly to any file that is accessible via the Web, however, ascertaining whether a particular link originator is entitled to monetization is difficult. Closed, protective systems provide a partial solution by preventing unauthorized linking to these files, but they also eliminate the benefit that would be derived from those same incoming links.
Deep-linking is the practice of linking to an interior webpage instead of the homepage of the site without requiring navigation through what can be complex layers of a website. The more invasive practice of Hot-linking is the practice of linking directly to a file on a site, instead of the hosting publisher's webpage that links to the file, thus bringing users directly to those resources. Hot-linking to files can be malicious, since it may be used to illegally display or access a file directly from a site that is out of the control of the publisher, thereby intentionally bypassing associated monetization pages. In the case of video, it may be used to illegally display the video, bypass any associated advertising, and effectively misappropriate the bandwidth of the site. Access to the content outside the terms service, that is, access without first viewing the advertising, may rise to an infringement of the provider's property rights.
Again, one of the most significant strengths of the open environment of the Web is that individuals and entities can link directly to materials around the world. Thus, there may be certain incidental benefits of hot-linking to a downloadable file that help a publisher or site owner. For instance, sets of inbound links can increase the publisher's rank within an Internet search system. The challenge is in retaining the benefits, while eliminating the detrimental aspects of hot-linking.
Because Internet commerce has been largely content-driven in its short history, the ability to open this immense pool of publishers' assets to monetization by advertisers and merchants would represent a significant revenue enhancement to all stakeholders. Accordingly, there is a need in the art to associate monetized content to publishers' downloadable assets. This need for the monetization of downloadable files exists in the open web environment where custodianship of the downloadable content has been determined, as well as in closed systems where it would function as an alternative to currently available methods.
As mentioned above, monetization of conventional web page content has been achieved with advertising, which is generally limited to web page views and click-through interactions, web page to web page intermediary redirect advertisements, embedded proprietary video advertisements, and so on. With the distinctive needs related to the monetization of downloadable files, there is also a need in the art for an effective presentation of the same. Thus, it would be desirable for a specialized monetization modality to accommodate the monetized content related to navigation to specific downloadable files